19 Weekend Rituals That Kids Born After 1995 Will Never Understand

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1. Unless you had concrete plans to hang out, nobody from school ever knew what you were doing over the weekend. The Internet was a baby. Cell phones were giant black bricks with antennas attached. So your weekend activities were yours and yours alone. Not until Xanga or LiveJournal did we experience the process of trying to make our lives seem way cooler than they actually were.

2. If you did want to see one of your friends over the weekend, you’d leave on Friday and say something like “Call my house around 2 tomorrow, that’s when I’ll be home!” You had to time that communication down to the minute.

3. The best Friday of the month was always the one with the premiere of the latest Disney Channel Original Movie. Sure, they’re still making DCOMS now, I think. (Yes, they officially are. Life-Size 2 is coming out in a couple months?! Thanks, Wikipedia). But the DCOMS now will never measure up to the glory that was: Johnny Tsunami, Wish Upon A Star, Brink!, Halloweentown, The Thirteenth Year, Smart House, etc. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNIImvFHRJE]

4. So on those beautiful Fridays at 8/7 central, you’d climb on the couch with a big soda (because it was your “weekend treat” even though you secretly drank it all the time). And you’d watch all the little Zoog Disney robots babble on and on until it was time for Zenon: The Zequel.

5. If there was no Disney Channel movie playing, you’d search your collection of VHS tapes and ponder if you wanted to watch Richie Rich for the sixth time. Opening the cabinet under the tv to look at your movie options was the 1998 version of scrolling through Netflix.

6. In a dramatic tone, you’d lament that there was nothiiiing to watch. So you’d rally your sibling(s) and then go beg your parents to take you to the one, the only – Blockbuster.

7. Seventy percent of the time you spent at Blockbuster was dedicated to choosing a movie. But you spent the other thirty percent begging your mom or dad or babysitter to let you guys get Cookie Dough Bites.

8. If you had a friend sleep over and you wanted to talk to your CrUsH on the phone, you’d spend 10-15 minutes scheming on AIM together so that the phone would only ring for a second before you picked it up. After all, you couldn’t risk waking your parents up. It was after 11:30 – your weekend bedtime.

9. And if your friend said, “I have this hilarious video to show you,” it did not mean opening the YouTube app on their phone and instantly playing it for you. It meant going to websites like eBaum’s World, clicking on a video, and finding something else to do for 45 minutes while it loaded. “Buffering…” is a lost art form.

10. If more than one friend was sleeping over, you bet your ass you were hopping on Napster to make an awesome playlist, which you would then burn onto a cd, which you would then put in a boom-box that was the size of a small suitcase.

11. …Because your only other option was turning on the radio in your room and praying that “All Star” by Smash Mouth would eventually come on. And then someone would yell “Did you guys know Kel from Kenan & Kel is in this video??” Later on in your adolescence, every other person you knew would try to convince you that Kel had died.

12. Saturday mornings were usually reserved for soccer games or other sports games. And the best part, even more than actually winning, was when the Snack Mom for that week brought a bag of orange slices. Unless, of course, it was your turn to bring the team snack but you and your parents both forgot because cell phone reminders weren’t a thing. (This happened to me more times than I’m proud of #middlechild).

13. The afternoon was reserved for relaxing, meaning you would run down to the basement to play Spyro or Crash Bandicoot or Mario Kart. You had no one to talk to through a magical headset while you did this either. Your only company was a neighborhood friend, or a younger sibling who perpetually yelled “It’s my turn, you died 5 times!” in your ear.

14. And although we loved our PlayStations and Nintendo 64’s, nothing topped real life. After all, Ghost in the Graveyard was the be-all, end-all of games. Flashlight Tag always sounded fun in theory, but after six minutes of it everyone was like, “This is dumb.”

15. Saturday Night Live? Yeah right. You were all about SNICK.

16. But if you watched Are You Afraid of the Dark?, your chances of sleeping that night were ruined.

17. Sundays were a day of rest. But for you, that meant begging your parents to take you to the park. Because there was an awesome playground there. And it was made out of what playgrounds should be made out of: WOOD. No cheesy plastic swing sets for you.

18. When you got home and the evening started approaching, you’d frantically call your friends’ houses and beg someone to give you the homework assignments because you forgot what they were. And then your mom would yell at you for calling them during ‘dinner hours’ (the ultimate sign of DISRESPECT).

19. So you’d go up to your room, finish your homework, and set your alarm on your funky, neon green alarm clock. And as you tried to fall asleep Sunday night, your only company was the posters hanging on your wall that you took out of Teen People Magazine.